How to lower your costs by 75% but get better results than before

Use at your own risk - worked for me though

[pmkpmk]

We recently outsourced one of our departments to become a company of its own. However they still get certain services from us - among others, all internet services including PPC management. In order to make billing easier, I created an MCC account and established the new company as a new account/client within the MCC. Then I started the tedious task of "moving" all campaigns from the old account to the new account. "Moving" means cutting and pasting all keywords, all ads, all copy etc. to the now account. I thought we had 2006 and Ajax nowadays....

Now guess what happened:

• I previously spent some 2000 US$ per month for the campaigns in question.
  
• After the transition, I only spend about 500 US$, plus click-through rate is higher plus conversion rate is higher.

All that has changed was the account who ran the ads. Everything else - keywords, CPC, ads - remained the same. My only explanation is that - very much like a Windows installation - the old account got polluted over time. Creating the new account was sort of a general reset.

Well, as usual, don't try this at home. But it worked for me.

[bostonseo]

That is pretty odd because new accounts are usually charged more.

[crak_bot]

I don't understand, if your CPC is the same the only way you would spend less is if you are getting fewer clicks.

[Hissingsid]

I don't understand, if your CPC is the same the only way you would spend less is if you are getting fewer clicks.

Well spotted!

Perhaps Adwords has started using a new calculator 1x4=1

...but only on new accounts ;)

Sid

[jotafk]

I believe he's referring to the maximum CPC set for the keywords, not the actual CPC billed.

[charliemunger]

I have experienced something similar.

Both me and one of my friends sell products in the same niche, and we are privy each others data re CPC etc...

thing is I have been running my account for about 6 months with good results, and he started afresh and there was a big disparity in click prices.

Account status (age, CTR of other campaigns etc) is obv one factor google works into its quality score

On the flip side, its an interesting question as to whether you can actually have a worse quality score than a new account has... I have anecdotal evidence that you can, but I couldnt state for sure